The New Kids On The Playground

By

Cory D.D. Miller, Socially Savvy

I used to think that the playground was a place where the epic battle of childhood skinned knees, burnt bottoms from the silver coated metallic mirror slide, and Tucker the Milk Money Bandit (man Tucker was a jerk) thrived and survived. I was wrong.

With Dayton’s ever growing arts scene, we as Daytonians have been witness to many amazing performances. But let me ask you this, how many of those performances have left you without words? How many of them have left you with a solemn “Cindy Lou Who Coo” of sadness stuck in the back of your throat? Hell, how many left you feeling something… anything actually?

Examine the human condition through the eyes of the millennial generation

Provide a raw and intimate theatrical experience

Take their community on a journey that is imaginative and emotionally truthful

Attract new audiences by broadening the spectrum of Dayton theatre

Create unique experiences by collaborating with local artists and businesses

Teach workshops and classes to educate, inspire, and further enrich the people of Dayton

Tell honest and resonant stories, with the stage as their playground

The first play I was able to attend was Reasons to be Pretty. A love story about the impossibility of love. A raw look at how a relationship can turn on a dime with the utterance of a simple yet so complex phrase.

I sat in the back corner of The Mathile Theatre in the Schuster Center. I came alone, not knowing what to expect. The lights came down to a stage set with simple items. No elaborate million dollar budgets with carte blanche to buy whatever is needed. It was simple and to the point.

I was blown away by everything about this production. From the professionalism, to the raw feeling of emotions throughout. I felt anyone was able to relate to this company, these actors in some way, shape, or form, millennial or not.

From Thursday – Sunday you will have the opportunity to have that experience with This Is Our Youth. A brief summary is listed below.

With tickets being at a steal of $20 for an adult and $15 for Students and Military, what is stopping you from coming? I highly encourage you to make time to check this performance out. Why have a regret when you can make a memory?

This Is Our Youth

In 1982, on Manhattan's Upper West Side, the wealthy, articulate pot-smoking teenagers who were small children in the '60s have emerged as young adults in a country that has just resoundingly rejected everything they were brought up to believe in. The very last wave of New York City's '60s-style Liberalism has come of age—and there's nowhere left to go. In meticulous, hilarious, and agonizing detail, THIS IS OUR YOUTH follows forty-eight hours of three very lost young souls in the big city at the dawn of the Reagan Era: Warren Straub, a dejected nineteen-year-old who steals fifteen thousand dollars from his abusive lingerie-tycoon father; Dennis Ziegler, the charismatic domineering drug-dealing friend who helps him put the money to good use; and Jessica Goldman, the anxiously insightful young woman Warren yearns for. Funny, painful, and compassionate, THIS IS OUR YOUTH is a living snapshot of the moment between adolescence and adulthood when many young people first go out into the world on their own, armed only with the ideas and techniques they developed as teenagers—ideas and techniques far more sophisticated than their parents ever realize, and far less effectual than they themselves can possibly imagine. I used to think that the playground was a place where the epic battle of childhood skinned knees, burnt bottoms from the silver coated metallic mirror slide, and Tucker the Milk Money Bandit (man Tucker was a jerk) thrived and survived. I was wrong.